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Titan
In Greek mythology, the Titans (Greek: Τiτᾶνες, Titânes, singular: Τιτάν, -ήν, Titân) were the pre-Olympian gods.1 According to the Theogony of Hesiod, they were the twelve children of the primordial parents Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), with six male Titans: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus, and six female Titans, called the Titanides (Greek: Τιτανίδες, Titanídes; also Titanesses): Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. Cronus and his sister Rhea were the parents of the first generation of Olympians: Zeus and his five siblings Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon. Descendants of the Titans are sometimes also called Titans. The Titans were the former gods, the generation of gods preceding the Olympians. They were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which told how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus, and ruled the cosmos with the Titans as his subordinates, and how Cronus and the Titans were in turn defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods, by Zeus and the Olympians, in a ten-year war called the Titanomachy. As a result of this war of the gods, Cronus and the vanquished Titans were banished from the upper world, being held imprisoned, under guard in Tartarus, although apparently, some of the Titans were allowed to remain free. Genealogy Hesiod's genealogy According to Hesiod, the Titan offspring of Uranus and Gaia were Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys and Cronus.Hesiod, Theogony 133–138. Eight of the Titan brothers and sisters married each other: Oceanus and Tethys, Coeus and Phoebe, Hyperion and Theia, and Cronus and Rhea. The other two Titan brothers married outside their immediate family. Iapetus married his niece Clymene, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, while Crius married his half-sister Eurybia, the daughter of Gaia and Pontus. The two remaining Titan sisters, Themis and Mnemosyne, became wives of Zeus. From Oceanus and Tethys came the three thousand river gods, and three thousand Oceanid nymphs.Hesiod, Theogony 337–370. From Coeus and Phoebe came Leto, another wife of Zeus, and Asteria.Hesiod, Theogony 404–409. From Crius and Eurybia came Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.Hesiod, Theogony 375–377. From Hyperion and Theia came the celestial personifications Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos (Dawn).Hesiod, Theogony 371–374. From Iapetos and Clymene came Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus.Hesiod, Theogony 507–511. From Cronus and Rhea came the Olympians: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus.Hesiod, Theogony 453–458. By Zeus, Themis bore the three Horae (Hours), and the three Moirai (Fates),Hesiod, Theogony 901–906, although at Theogony 217 the Moirai are said to be the daughters of Nyx (Night). and Mnemosyne bore the nine Muses.Hesiod, Theogony 915–920. While the descendants of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, Cronus and Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne (i.e the river gods, the Oceanids, the Olympians, the Horae, the Moirai, and the Muses) are not normally considered to be Titans, descendants of the other Titans, notably: Leto, Helios, Atlas and Prometheus, are themselves sometimes referred to as Titans.Parada, p. 179 s.v. TITANS; Smith, s.v. Titan 2.; Rose, p. 143 s.v. Atlas, p. 597 s.v. Leto, p. 883 s.v. Prometheus; Tripp, p. 120 s.v. Atlas, p. 266 s.v. Helius, p. 499 s.v. Prometheus. Variations Rhea, both sister and wife to Cronus.]] Passages in a section of the Iliad called the Deception of Zeus, suggest the possibility that Homer knew a tradition in which Oceanus and Tethys (rather than Uranus and Gaia, as in Hesiod) were the parents of the Titans.Fowler 2013, p. 11; Hard, pp. 36–37, p. 40; Burkert 1995, pp. 91–92; Gantz, pp. 11–12; West 1983, pp. 119–120. According to Epimenides (see Fowler 2013, pp. 7–8), the first two beings, Night and Aer, produced Tartarus, who in turn produced two Titans (possibly Oceanus and Tethys) from whom came the world egg. Twice Homer has Hera describe the pair as "Oceanus, from whom the gods are sprung, and mother Tethys",Homer, Iliad 14.201, 302 201. while in the same passage Hypnos describes Oceanus as "from whom they all are sprung".Homer, Iliad 245. According West 1997, p. 147, these lines suggests a myth in which Oceanus and Tethys are the "first parents of the whole race of gods." However as Gantz, p. 11, points out, "mother" may simply refer to the fact that Tethys was Hera's foster mother for a time, as Hera tells us in the lines immediately following, while the reference to Oceanus as the genesis of the gods "might be simply a formulaic epithet indicating the numberless rivers and springs descended from Okeanos" (compare with Iliad 21.195–197). Plato, in his Timaeus, provides a genealogy (probably Orphic) which perhaps reflected an attempt to reconcile this apparent divergence between Homer and Hesiod, with Uranus and Gaia as the parents of Oceanus and Tethys, and Oceanus and Tethys as the parents of Cronus and Rhea and the other Titans, as well as Phorcys.Gantz, pp. 11–12; West 1983, pp. 117–118; Fowler 2013, p. 11; Plato, Timaeus 40d–e. In his Cratylus, Plato quotes Orpheus as saying that Oceanus and Tethys were "the first to marry", possibly reflecting an even older Orphic theogony in which Oceanus and Tethys, rather than Uranus and Gaia, were the primeval parents.West 1983, pp. 118–120; Fowler 2013, p. 11; Plato, Cratylus 402b Orphic [https://archive.org/stream/orphicorumfragme00orphuoft#page/86/mode/2up fr. 15 Kern]. To Hesiod's twelve Titans, the mythographer Apollodorus, adds a thirteenth, the Titan Dione, the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus.Apollodorus, 1.1.3, 1.3.1. Dione is also the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus in the Iliad, 5.370, 3.374; but in the Theogony, 191–200, Aphrodite was born from the foam which formed around Uranus' severed genitals when Cronus threw them into the sea. The Roman mythographer Hyginus, in his somewhat confused genealogy,Bremmer, p. 5, calls Hyginus' genealogy "a strange hodgepodge of Greek and Roman cosmogonies and early genealogies". after listing as offspring of Aether (Upper Sky) and Earth (Gaia): Ocean Oceanus, Themis, Tartarus, and Pontus, next lists "the Titans", followed by two of Hesiod's Hundred-Handers: Briareus and Gyges, one of Hesiod's three Cyclopes: Steropes, then continues his list with Atlas, Hyperion and Polus Coeus, Saturn Cronus, Ops Rhea, Moneta Mnemosyne, Dione, and the three Furies: Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone.Hyginus, Fabulae Theogony 3. The geographer Pausanias, mentions seeing the image of a man in armor, who was supposed to be the Titan Anytus, who was said to have raised the Arcadian Despoina. Former gods The Titans, as a group, represent a pre-Olympian order.Hansen, p. 302: "As a group the Titans are the older gods, the former gods, in contrast to the Oympians, who are the younger and present gods". Hesiod uses the expression "the former gods" (theoi proteroi) in reference to the Titans.West 2007, p. 162; Hard, p. 35; West 1997, pp. 111, 298; Hesiod, Theogony 424, 486. As noted by Woodard, p. 154 n. 44, Theogony 486: Οὐρανίδῃ μέγ’ ἄνακτι, θεῶν προτέρων βασιλῆι, which some interpret as meaning Cronus "former king of the gods" (e.g. Evelyn-White), others interpret as meaning Cronus "king of the former gods" (e.g. Most, pp. 40, 41; Caldwell, p. 56; West 1988, p. 17), for an argument against "former king" see West 1966, p. 301 on line 486 θεῶν προτέρων. They were the banished gods, who were no longer part of the upper world.Hard, p. 35: "The essential point is that the Titans are the former ruling gods who were banished from the upper world when the present devine order was established."; West 1983, p. 164: "The Titans are by definition the banished gods, the gods who have gone out of the world"; West 1966, p. 200 on line 133. Rather they were the gods who dwelt underground in Tartarus,Gantz, pp. 45–46; West 1966, p. 200 on line 133; Hesiod, Theogony 729 ff., 807–814; Homer, Iliad 8.478–481, 14.274, 14.278–279; 15.225; Aeschylus (?), Prometheus Bound 221. and as such, they may have been thought of as "gods of the underworld", who were the antithesis of, and in opposition to, the Olympians, the gods of the heavens.Woodard, pp. 96–97; West 1966, p. 201. Hesiod called the Titans "earth-born" (chthonic),Woodard, p. 97; Hesiod, Theogony 697. and in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Hera prays to the Titans "who dwell beneath the earth", calling on them to aid her against Zeus, just as if they were chthonic spirits.Gantz, p. 46; Homeric Hymn to Apollo (3) 334–339. In a similar fashion, in the Iliad, Hera, upon swearing an oath by the underworld river Styx, "invoked by name all the gods below Tartarus, that are called Titans" as witnesses. Athanaassakis and Wolkow, p. 140; Burkert 1985, p. 200, which gives the Titans as an example of "chthonic gods"; Homer, Iliad 14.270–279. They were the older gods, but not, apparently, as was once thought, the old gods of an indigenous group in Greece, historically displaced by the new gods of Greek invaders. Rather, they were a group of gods, whose mythology at least, seems to have been borrowed from the Near East.Woodard, p. 92; Hard, pp. 34–35; Burkert 1995, p. 94; Caldwell, p. 36 on lines 133-137; West 1966, p. 200. These imported gods gave context and provided a backstory for the Olympian gods, explaining where these Greek Olympian gods had come from, and how they had come to occupy their position of supremacy in the cosmos. The Titans were the previous generation, and family of gods, whom the Olympians had to overthrow, and banish from the upper world, in order to become the ruling pantheon of Greek gods. For Hesiod, possibly in order to match the twelve Olympian gods, there were twelve Titans: six males and six females, with some of Hesiod's names perhaps being mere poetic inventions, so as to arrive at the right number.West 1966 p. 36, which, concerning Hesiod's list of names, says: "Its very heterogeneity betrays its lack of traditional foundtion. Rhea, Zeus' mother, must be married to Kronos, Zeus' father. Hyperion, as father of Helios, must be put back to that generation; so must ancient and venerable personages as Oceanus and Tethys, Themis and Mnemosyne. By the addition of four more colourless names (Koios, Kreios, Theia, and Phoibe), the list is made up to a complement of six males and six females";cf. West 1966, p. 200 on line 133. In Hesiod's Theogony, apart from Cronus, the Titans play no part at all in the overthrow of Uranus, and we only hear of their collective action in the Titanomachy, their war with the Olympians.Hard, p. 34. As a group, they have no further role in conventional Greek myth, nor do they play any part in Greek cult.Hard, p. 35; West 1966 pp. 200–201 on line 133. As individuals, few of the Titans have any separate identity.Caldwell, p. 36 on lines 133-137. Aside from Cronus, the only other figure Homer mentions by name as being a Titan is Iapetus.West 1966 pp. 36, 157–158 on line 18. Some Titans seem only to serve a genealogical function, providing parents for more important offspring: Coeus and Phoebe as the parents of Leto, the mother, by Zeus, of the Olympians Apollo and Artemis; Hyperion and Theia as the parents of Helios, Selene and Eos; Iapetus as the father of Atlas and Prometheus; and Crius as the father of three sons Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses, who themselves seem only to exist to provide fathers for more important figures such as the Anemoi (Winds), Nike (Victory), and Hecate. Category:Speices